Reducing our carbon footprint

The University of Sheffield Approach

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

2

Overview

• Background

• Desktops

• Printing

• Data Centres

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

3

Background

• 13,000 PCs on campus

• Over 100 IT services

• Two data centres

• Centralised and distributed printing

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

4

PC Energy usage

• Work done by Chris Cartledge/Ian Jenkinson on processor wattage

• Work on monitor energy usage needed

• Work on other components (disc drives, memory?)

• Thin client solutions

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

5

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

6

Printing

• 50 million sheets of paper used 2007-2008

• Only 28% of paper recycled

• 2010 – 98% ‘recycled or environmentally preferable’

• 835,000 Kwh p/a; 450 tonnes CO2

Printing• Environmental Print Review

• Recommendations

• Print Audit

• Print submissions software

• Pulling together print/photocopying under CiCS

• Student Printing• Prepay replaced old collect and pay system

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

7

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

8

Data Centres

• Main activities• Virtualisation

• Simple fixes

• Air-conditioning

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

9

Virtualisation

• Pre 2010• 50ish physical Intel

servers

• 100ish physical Sparc servers

• Doesn’t include HPC

• 2010• 20ish physical Intel

servers inc 4 VM boxes

• 110 VMs

• 50ish physical Sparc machines

• 4 Sparc zone hosts

• Further consolidation on the way

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

10

VM Savings

• 1 physical server c£250 p/a energy

• 1 Virtual server c£750 p/a energy

• 4 virtual servers running 110 VMs

• Savings = £500 * 106 = £10,600 p/a

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

11

Virtualisation - disk

• Pre 2007• 15 different disk

enclosures

• Directly attached storage on Novell and windows servers

• 2007-2010• 2 physical disk

enclosures

• Staged removal of DAS

• Nearly all storage now on NetApp disks

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

12

Simple fixes

• HPC – low energy memory

• Lower energy processors (AMD HE)

• Environmental considerations part of every project

• Air conditioning

Brunswick electricity use

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

13

CC electricity use

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

14

04/18/23 © The University of Sheffield

15

Free Cooling project

• Hot aisle containment

• Chiller units only active when ambient temperature rises above input temperature

• Savings of c£60,000 p/a approx

• Capital cost may be between £200k-£400k

• Pump-priming money may be available (Salix)

To DiscoverAndUnderstand.